in October) – This health insurance plan by interview date file contains information about each private insurance plan covering each individual surveyed, with one record per interview date (three annually). Private health insurance plans include physician/hospital, dental, vision, medigap, and prescription drugs. This file contains health insurance-specific information, such as an edited monthly out-of-pocket insurance premium, source of coverage and premium payment, as well as some questions about the plan holder's satisfaction with the plan. Although this file can be merged with both person-level files (on DUPERSID) and the Jobs files (on JOBSIDX), this file contains one record per person, per plan, per interview and therefore does not easily condense into one-to-one merges. As an analytic shortcut, data users might simply limit this data set to each unique person-plan's first interview record of the year; the first interview number (RN) available for each distinct establishment identifier and policyholder identifier combination (ESTBIDX + PHLDRIDX). The Longitudinal Weight files (released annually in December) – This person-level file mirrors the main Consolidated files in terms of contents, except that it contains survey responses for all five rounds and therefore contains half as many observations. The two-year, five-interview survey data aggregated into this file is designed to be representative of two years' worth of medical behavior of the U.S. noninstitutionalized population over the period specified. Household Component Event Files The eight event-level files generally contain one record per event, and contain various information pertaining to the specific type of event. Each record contains one or more ICD-9 codes to describe and categorize the type of medical encounter experienced by the surveyed individual. The event-level files also contain the breakdown of spending by payor associated with the event and a date (or start and end dates) that the event took place. Each of these event files can be joined with the person-level files in a many-to-one match (on DUPERSID), where an individual with zero medical events during the calendar year would generate zero matches, but an individual with two doctor visits and a dental visit would generate three matches across all of the event files. The event-level files can also be joined with the condition files (on CONDIDX) to determine what medical expenditure can be associated with particular conditions. The eight files include: The Prescribed Medicines files (released annually in October) – This file contains one household-reported prescribed medicine purchase during the calendar year. Prescription